Official statistics such as the national census have an optional question asking the person to answer what religion they hold. This data is not truly accurate of the whole UK population because it is the only question on the census, which is optional therefore thousands of people may choose not to answer it at all, which results in gaps of the data. The national census is the only official statistic that asks religious views so this could be seen as the only reliable data even if it has large gaps in.

Another reason that stats on religious beliefs may not be accurate is the fact that people may simply lie, whether it is to official bodies or sociologists carrying out surveys to collect data. In the national census, 240,000 people stated that they were of ‘other religion’ such as Satanists or Jedis. It could be seen that this data is invalid as the UK does not have thousands of Jedis. This is a major problem as to whether beliefs may not be accurate because of the fundamental fact that people lie.

The final reason is how different religions classify the actual number of members they have. Scientology claimed to have millions of members but this data came from the number of people who just took the introductory session and not the people who actually practice the religion so this is obviously invalid data as if the number of people who had been christened were counted under the Church of England then there would be many more members than there actually are. The number of people in these religions also fluctuates for multiple reasons, which is problematic when determining accuracy of data on religious beliefs. People may join, leave or even change religions, which causes data collected to always be out of date and invalid.

Overall, these factors contribute to why stats on religious beliefs are unclear and inaccurate. If the optional question on the census was